Microsoft has released the final Beta of Windows Home Server 2011, previously code name Vail. This review will document our hands on experience with the new Beta, discuss the changes from the previous Beta release, and present suggestions as to how to install and manage the server.
Alas, Drive Extender has been removed from all versions of the Colorado platform including WHS 2011. Folder duplication has been eliminated. In its place is the ability to enable shadow copies for each drive. Plus the way hard drives are treated as a continuous storage pool have been dramatically changed. These two functions were major components that were used by Drive Extender. Eliminating Drive Extender basically returns the file system used by WHS 2011 back to that used by Microsoft’s operating systems. Also, the backup process has a physical limitation of 2 TB per disk partition. We will discuss this limitation later in this blog.
The server used to test this version of Windows Home Server 2011 Beta is a home built system. The motherboard is an EVGA 730i motherboard with eight SATA II ports. The board is installed with 4 GB of OCI RAM, an Intel Core Duo E8200 2.66 GHz, and 1 x WD10 01FALS 1 TB, 3 x WD20 01FASS 2 TB, and 3 x WD20 EARS 2 TB hard drives. The FALS and FASS are WDC Black drives intended to be used as system data drives and the EARS are WDC Green drives intended to be use as backup drives. The three EARS drives are placed in a removable drive backplane. The case is a ARK 4U–500–CA rackmount case.
The installation of the Windows Home Server 2001 Beta software was very streamlined and extremely easy to perform the initial configuration, such as location, time, server name, etc. The installation routine was indiscriminate with the drive to use as the system drive. I thought I had set up the hard drives so that the 1 TB drive would be the system drive. However, either I had incorrectly set up the drives or the installation routine had a different way to figure the drive 0, but a 2 TB FASS drive was used as the system drive. The installation partitioned this drive as a 60 GB drive C with the remainder as drive D. I would recommend that if you are installing your server with more than one hard drive, to unplug the power connector to all drives except the drive you want to be the system drive. Reconnect the power connectors after completing the installation.
The Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard Server Folders and Hard Drives tab has been altered to reflect the removal of Drive Extender. The sub tab for Summary has been removed and the sub tabs for Server Folders and Hard Drives have been changed to reflect the tasks and information that are available.
The Server Folders tab no longer display columns for duplication and free space for the folders but includes columns for the folder’s location and free space of the drive.
Windows Home Server “Vail” |
Windows Home Server 2011 |
The Hard Drives tab now includes columns for used and free space for each drive listed.
Windows Home Server “Vail” |
Windows Home Server 2011 |
Because Drive Extender has been removed, there is no storage pool that stores files as if they were located in one drive. The end user is now responsible for determining the hard disk where the shared folders are to reside. The installation routine creates a C drive for the WHS 2011 system and a D drive for data. If your home server has only one disk, then all of the shared folders will reside on the D drive.
For those who lament the loss of the disk usage by graphical depiction, similar information is displayed in Windows Explorer with the Computer option.
The installation routine creates all shared folders in the D drive. Initially these folders are empty because there is no data migration between WHS v1 and WHS 2011. We recommend that, if additional data drives are available, the folders should be created and moved prior to copying the files from the original home server to the WHS 2011 folders. If you are using the same WHS computer for WHS 2011, then be sure to backup all data from the WHS v1 server before installing WHS 2011. A backup can be made by a copy to optical media or other hard drives that are on the network.
A system health alert is generated when new disks are found. These disks can be formatted to store files or be used to store server backups. To add disks to format for use in WHS 2011, click the alert icon to launch the Alert Viewer, click the “Format the hard disk” task, and follow the instructions to finish the wizard.
Moving folders implies that the home server has more than one disk drive. Remember, each hard disk can store a maximum amount of files. What disk the folder resides depends on the size of the disk and total size of files that currently reside in the folder or folders. Some amount of preplanning time should be spent to determine current space used and to calculate space that will be used in the future. Shared folders that contain a large amount of files may have to be separated in to two or mare folders and be located on as many disks.
The following describes the steps necessary to move system folders from one drive to another.
Step 1. Folders can be moved from the Server Folders sub tab. Highlight the folder and click the “Move the folder” task.
Step 2. Choose a hard drive to move the folder. There must be sufficient hard disk space on the chosen drive to store the files in the folder. Click the Move folder button to move the folder to the new drive.
The following describes the steps that are necessary to configure and schedule the backup process.
Step 3. After the folder is moved, open the server backup configuration to verify that the folder is selected for backup. If backup disks have not been defined, the wizard will permit you to select drives to use for backup.
Step 4. Select the disks to be used by the backup. In this example, I want to use the three WD20 EARS drives for backup. The three disks are selected and click on the Next button.
Step 5. A confirmation message displays the disks chosen for backup. Click the Yes button to format the drives.
Finalizing steps. The wizard steps you through labeling these disks, specifying a schedule, selecting the drive or folder to backup, and confirming the backup settings.
Windows Home Server 2011 has a 2 TB partition limitation that is imposed by the server backup process. One may create partitions larger than 2 TB and share folders on these partitions through the Dashboard, but cannot backup those shares with server backup. This is why the Format a Drive Wizard creates a maximum of 2 TB partitions by default to ensure that a consumer can perform a backup of all their files.
Drive Extender has been removed from WHS 2011 and along with it, folder duplication, easy expansion and management of disk space, graphical chart of storage disk space, file landing zone, and server balancing. This has placed more responsibility on the user to manage disk space.
With WHS 2011, more emphasis is being placed on backup of the server, however, the server backup process is limited by 2 TB partition sizes. We can only hope that Microsoft places priority on extending the capability of the backup process.
We make the following recommendations when migrating to WHS 2011. These are not only best practices but will help to speed the installation and configuration process.
- Backup all data on the WHS v1 server to optical disc or to network drives.
- Use the smallest drive for the drive 0 or system drive.
- Disconnect the power connectors to all drives except for the system drive.
- Move shared folders based on the expected size of the folder.
- Adhere to the 2 TB partition to backup the share. Split shared folders that exceed 2 TB to multiple drives.
- Complete all folder moves before migrating data to WHS 2011 folders.
Before I installed WHS 2011 I had planned to use the three FASS drives and configure them as RAID 5. At the last moment I changed my mind and used the drives as additional drives for the server. As a result, I gained 2 TB of storage space and I found that I could accept the loss of Drive Extender. For me to be fully satisfied with WHS 2011, Microsoft must eliminate the 2 TB partition size limitation of the backup task to allow for the backup of larger disks and partition sizes.
I have been very satisfied with Windows Home Server 2011. The installation and configuration of the server went without experiencing any problems. Even with the removal of Drive Extender I had no problems with using the add disk and move folder tasks. In fact, WHS 2011 seems to act more like a file sharing server than ever before.
Are there any AV options available? Seems a bit rubbish that MS dont make MSE availabe for home server products… I know some had got this workin on WHS1, but I believe there were still some issues…now with removal of DE, and no more tombstones (?), would be good if we had an inexpensive choice for security….
So, how is WHS 2011 any better than just adding another Windows 7 machine to my network? Or even just a NAS? It seems that the increased amount of user responsibility is really no different than manually setting up backup drives in Win7. If I go with another Win 7 machine, I would also get Media Center.
Where’s the advantage in owning this product, Microsoft? FAIL. FAIL. FAIL. I am so disappointed because I LOVE my WHS v.1.
Microsoft, fix this product!! Bring back DE, add Media Center, fix the 2tb partition limit (especially in light of the excuse that DE is gone because hard drives are bigger and cheaper).
How is this product better than the existing windows home server and why would one want to upgrade?
I have Homeserver with 1 x 1TB and 3 x 2 TB and approach 90% of diskspace. I cannot see how to migrate to WHS2011 as I don’t see how I can temporary store 6.5 TB somewhere. It is DE and duplication that made me choose WHS over a NAS. You can expand as needed in time and money.
As a home user the new version of WHS implies for me to go pro, study RAID, sort out diskuse and folderuse. That’s a huge investment in hardware, knowledge and maintenance. Small Business Server becomes more attractive this way.
Add to this that your add-ins become useless and available knowledge on SBS is widely available, my conclusion is to pass. I foretell that the next upgrade of WHS will bring back DE and that this 2011 version will not be a commercial succes Stevie B!
BTW the 2 TB limit might have to do with hardwarelimitations! Partitions over 2 TB cannot be addressed with bootsectors in MBR. GPT, the future is not yet widely implemented in hardware(64 bits) and BIOS.
“V”ista……”V”ail
Need I say more
Why does MS take a good product and ruin it. This version is a disaster compared to the existing one. Windows phone 7 is a disaster compared to 6.5.
With regards to server 2011, you may be right. With regards to Windows Phone 7, you’re on crack. Windows Mobile 6.5 was garbage. I happily dumped it in favor of iPhone, and not too long ago I happily dumped iPhone in favor of Windows Phone 7. I’m not looking back–WP7 is a *good* product, it just needs a little more development and it’ll be great. It’s UI is already far superior to, well, everything else on the market
Jason, you made me lough so hard that I messed coke on my keyboard. Thanks for that
I thought whinning and complaining was suppossed to be the domain of Apple wipes. We’re PC users – we have the freedom to mine resources, revolutionize and innovate! Stand up! Stop being a lazy SOB and be a man…or a woman!
I have an HP WHS system. I’ve given up on it and I’ve given up on Microsoft. Time to move to Apple.
i too have the HP system and sold several of my small business owning friends on them, as well.
(hope they’ll still talk to me)
this release of the product is a pass — the folder duplication was essentially an inexpensive way to get RAID-like protection in software.
to me it feels like HP and MS three all of us under da bus – these HP windows homeservers have been basically orphaned.
So I’ve got this spare PC with caperbility of on board Raid 5 and I’ve just bought WHS 2011 & 5x 1TB HDDs and I thought I would have a play !
But are you saying I can’t create a Raid Array that WHS 2011 can use in full ?
Will I have to pre-partition the array into 2x 2TB volumes, plus a 3rd volume for any remainer before connecting to WHS ???
This appears to be a very poor situation !
I though that by using Raid, I could get around the lack of DE and folder dup, but if I’m gonna be limited to 2TB, just for backup reasons, then that sucks !
Maybe I need to rethink this from scratch ? !
I’m not 100% clear on the implications implied in the article but my understanding is that you should not need to backup or duplicate the RAID5 array.
I to was planning on upgrading from WHS v1 /DE to WHS 2011 /RAID5.
My plan was to install a RAID adapter into the spare PCIe4x slot of my Acer H340, slip in a small SSD system drive into a freed-up SATA port (probably let it sit on the bottom of the case since SSD doesnt generate heat), install WHS2011, then dedicate the existing 4x WD20EADS drives to a 4-stripe RAID-5 data drive.
Can anyone comment on how this plan might work out?
Thanks in advance.